What a Sanctuary Forgets

This poem stemmed from a conversation with my friend, Isaiah, about the role of church in people’s lives.

He offered a thought that stayed with me:

“The church is a hospital for sick souls.”

The metaphor lingered, not only because of its promise of healing, but because institutions created to tend to human wounds can also, at times become places where those wounds are deepened.

This is my reflection on that tension.

---

A sanctuary
forgets itself
the moment
it loves certainty
more than compassion.

It names the wound
before asking
where it began.

It reaches for answers
while the heart 
is still searching 
for words.

Grief becomes
something to explain.

Doubt,
something to overcome.

Questions,
something to silence
instead of 
something to accompany.

Yet healing
has never entered
through certainty.

It arrives
when one soul 
chooses
to remain
beside another

long enough
for silence 
to become shelter.

Only then
does shame begin
to loosen its grip.

Only then
does the heart remember
it was never asking
to be corrected.

Only
to be witnessed.

Perhaps
the deepest betrayal
is not the absence 
of healing

but convincing 
the wounded
that they are
the wound.

For some enter
through the doors
of the sanctuary
carrying grief, 
fear,
and questions,

hoping to find
a place
where their broken pieces
can finally rest.

And instead
they are taught
to fear the very parts
of themselves
that are asking 
to be healed.

They leave
not knowing
they were seeking
medicine,

only believing
they have been given
another diagnosis.

Perhaps
what a sanctuary 
forgets
is what it once knew:

that no one
crosses its threshold
carrying 
only themselves.

Every prayer
arrives
holding another name.

Every bowed head
conceals
a story
still learning
how to be spoken.

Every candle
offers its light
without asking
who deserves it.

Perhaps
that is why
a sanctuary
is most itself

not when it speaks
with the confidence
of a courtroom,

but when it keeps vigil
like a hospital.

Not because 
some souls
are sicker 
than others,

but because
every soul
comes carrying
what cannot be healed 
alone.

And compassion
has always found
the places
where judgement
could only name 
the wound.